Oh what a tangled web

I had been friends with Becca and Mark while at college. They were my inspirational couple: both attractive and worked so well together. We hung out occasionally and I had both of them on my buddy list. After I graduated, we kept in touch and still got together from time to time. I was shocked one day when I received an IM from a girl, Katie, I had an on-again/off-again friendship with in college and she proclaimed that she was dating Mark. I asked what had happened with Becca, to which she responded, “I don’t know, but he said they had broken up.”

Being the concerned friend, I IMed Becca and said, “hey, I just heard you and Mark broke up, is everything okay?”

To my total and complete horror, she responded with the one thing I wasn’t expecting:

“We aren’t broken up.”

I wasn’t sure how to react. Either Katie had lied or Mark had lied. Becca, understandably, wanted to know who told me that they had broken up. I didn’t want to reveal Katie until I found out what had happened. I told Becca that I must have misunderstood something that someone said and to let me try to get to the bottom of it.

Back over to Katie: “Um hey, I was just talking to Becca and she says that she and Mark are still together.” Denial. Anger. Whatever stages of grief you can remember from psychology class. At first she didn’t want to hear it, but she eventually came around. She said she’d talk to Mark and find out what was going on. A day later, Katie IMs me, very upset, and confirms that Mark was cheating on Becca. With her. Ouch.

The entire shakeout went like this. Katie tells Mark to take a flying leap for lying to her. Becca tells Mark to take a flying leap for cheating on her. No hard feelings between Becca and Katie. Mark ends up alone. Zack briefly ends up dating Katie. Oh what a tangled web…